OMA Co-Founder Madelon Vriesendorp Wins the 2025 Soane Medal

Dutch-born artist Madelon Vriesendorp, one of the co-founders of the world-famous architecture office OMA, has been awarded the 2025 Soane Medal. With this honor, she becomes the first UK-based female artist to ever receive the medal since it was first introduced in 2017.

The Soane Medal, given each year by Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, recognizes people who have made an exceptional contribution to architecture and to helping the public understand its cultural importance.

Born in 1945 in the Netherlands, Vriesendorp studied art and developed a passion for painting imaginative and emotional scenes. In 1975, she helped establish the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) together with Rem Koolhaas, Elia Zenghelis, and Zoe Zenghelis. While Koolhaas became known for his radical ideas about cities and buildings, Vriesendorp became famous for her playful, dreamlike artworks that gave architecture a human side.

Her paintings often show buildings as if they had personalities or emotions, turning cold structures into living beings. One of her most iconic works, “Flagrant Delit,” shows the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building lying in bed together, surprised by the Statue of Liberty shining her torch on them. This surreal and humorous image became the cover for Koolhaas’s book Delirious New York (1978) and quickly turned into one of OMA’s most recognizable symbols. The artwork perfectly captured the spirit of the time—where architecture was seen not just as construction, but as storytelling, fantasy, and culture.

In the past two decades, Vriesendorp’s influence on architectural thinking has been rediscovered and celebrated. Exhibitions like “The World of Madelon Vriesendorp” (2008) at the Architectural Association in London and later at the Venice Biennale introduced her work to new generations of architects and artists. Through these shows, many realized how deeply her visual imagination shaped the identity and communication of OMA’s early projects.

The 2025 Soane Medal will be presented to Vriesendorp on November 18, 2025, during a ceremony at the Royal Academy in London. As part of the event, she will also give a public lecture to share her thoughts about art, architecture, and her long creative journey.

The judging panel, led by architect Amin Taha, selected Vriesendorp from an international list of nominees. With this recognition, she joins a distinguished group of past winners, including Hanif Kara, Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, Peter Barber, and Marina Tabassum—all celebrated figures who have changed the way architecture is practiced and understood around the world.

In summary, the award not only honors Vriesendorp’s remarkable career but also highlights the power of art and imagination in shaping architecture’s public story. Her unique way of connecting emotion, humor, and design continues to inspire architects and creatives everywhere.

About the Soane Medal

The Soane Medal is awarded annually by Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, one of the most distinctive house museums in the world and the former home of the celebrated nineteenth-century architect Sir John Soane. First presented in 2017, the medal recognises architects, educators, and thinkers who have shaped how the public understands the value of architecture. Rather than honouring a single building, it celebrates a lifetime of contribution to architectural culture and ideas.

By recognising an artist whose work sits at the intersection of painting and architecture, the 2025 award reflects a broadening view of what architectural contribution can mean. It signals that imagination, storytelling, and cultural commentary are now valued alongside the more conventional achievements of designing and constructing buildings.

The Role of OMA in Contemporary Architecture

The Office for Metropolitan Architecture, founded in 1975, became one of the most influential practices of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Known for questioning conventional assumptions about cities, density, and form, OMA helped shift architecture toward a more research-driven and culturally engaged approach. Many leading architects of today passed through the office early in their careers, extending its influence across the global profession.

Vriesendorp’s recognition highlights that the founding spirit of OMA was as much about ideas and image-making as it was about construction. Her paintings gave the practice a visual identity that helped its radical thinking reach a far wider audience than drawings alone could have.

Why Her Work Still Resonates

Vriesendorp’s images endure because they treat buildings as characters with feelings, desires, and tensions. In an era when much architectural representation has become highly technical and photorealistic, her playful and emotional approach offers a refreshing reminder that buildings carry meaning beyond their function. Her work invites viewers to think about cities as living, dramatic places rather than collections of objects.

This emotional reading of architecture continues to influence how designers communicate their ideas. The growing interest in visual storytelling, narrative drawing, and conceptual collage in studios today owes a clear debt to the imaginative tradition she helped establish.

What This Award Means for Artists in Architecture

By honouring Vriesendorp, the museum acknowledges the essential but often overlooked role that artists play in shaping architectural thought. Painters, illustrators, model makers, and other creatives frequently help architects test and express ideas that cannot be captured in technical drawings alone. The award encourages a more inclusive understanding of the profession, one that recognises collaboration across disciplines as a source of lasting cultural influence.

Key Takeaways

Vriesendorp’s 2025 Soane Medal marks a milestone as the first awarded to a UK-based female artist, and it reaffirms that imagination and storytelling are central to architecture. Her career shows that contributions to the field are not limited to constructed buildings, and that the way we picture and narrate architecture can be just as powerful as the structures themselves.